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Sean Lee really is a coach on the field for the Cowboys

May 12, 2018 | by RJ Ochoa, SB Nation

Sean Lee is one of the best defensive football players on earth. That much is true.

This, obviously, makes him one of the best on the Dallas Cowboys. In fact, one of the few things generally agreed upon by Cowboys fans is that Sean Lee is the single best defensive player on the team. Glad we can all agree on something, I think. (Anybody backing DeMarcus Lawrence?)

So much about Lee’s strengths are obvious when he plays. He’s everything you could want in a linebacker, punishing and relentless, but on top of his physical strengths sits a mountain of knowledge inside his brain.

Lee hails from Linebacker University, Penn State, and his intellect has been heralded since he was first drafted eight years ago (where’d that time go?). While his football brain is acknowledged as being among the best, we now have evidence of it being on the level of a coach.

This clip is from the Cowboys win in New York last December. The conversation following the Giants score, as noted, is between Lee and secondary coach Joe Baker. It’s not exactly a great look for Baker that he’s asking, coaching really, Lee to do something that can’t be done.

Joe Baker has since been dismissed from the Cowboys, and no one is saying it was for this particular instance or anything of that variety. But it is worth pointing out how there was at least one instance in Baker’s tenure that he wasn’t the most well-versed within the Cowboys.

In Baker’s defense, it’s impractical to expect him to be completely correct all the time. Nobody is perfect. This exchange says more about Lee’s greatness and bright mind that it does Baker’s inefficiencies, and it highlights exactly why Dallas plays so poorly without Sean, they’re missing what is literally an essential coach on the field.